Table of Contents
- Why Conflict Reaches Women Through Daily Life
- The Numbers Behind Women's Exposure and How to Read Them
- Four errors that bend the argument
- Risks That Set Women Apart in Armed Conflict
- Women as Responders and Leaders Beyond Victimhood
- A response that outlasted the offices
- Legal Protection Frameworks and Their Limits
- Where Protection Breaks Down After Violence
- How Women Shape Peace Agreements and Where They Are Shut Out
- Use These Findings in Your Committee Research
Do not index
Do not index
In 2025, approximately 756 million women and girls, 19 percent of the global female population, lived within 50 kilometers of a deadly conflict event, the highest level recorded since the 1990s, according to UN Women. That proximity is not a map footnote. It is where clinics close, markets empty, and the walk for water becomes a security decision.
Women in conflict zones face war while carrying out ordinary work. Interpreting the figures carefully, and distinguishing between a seat at talks and genuine influence or funding, alters what protection and diplomacy can deliver.
Why Conflict Reaches Women Through Daily Life
Say a woman leaves a crowded shelter at dawn to reach a clinic, then a water point, then a school gate where she hopes her daughter is still enrolled. Conflict behaves like a storm entering through every household door. It hits the clinic, the water point, the school gate, and the market, so she meets it while doing tasks that would be unremarkable in peacetime.
Proximity combines direct physical danger with disrupted healthcare, displacement, lost livelihoods, and greater exposure to gender-based violence. The people inside that radius include women and girls of all ages, displaced and stateless women, women with disabilities, and older women. Many are heads of household or the primary carers for children and injured relatives.
Civilian-death totals hide those differences. A single casualty figure can look gender-neutral while the risks of pregnancy, hunger, lost schooling, and abuse fall unevenly. Healthcare access in conflict zones is one place that unevenness shows up first, because a closed maternity ward is not visible in a body count.
A useful reading order starts with verified figures and how to read them, then the risks that set women apart, the work women already do as responders, the legal frameworks, the point where protection fails after violence, participation in peace processes, and how to apply the findings in committee research.
War's harm to women extends well beyond battlefield casualties, so the topic needs its own analysis.
The Numbers Behind Women's Exposure and How to Read Them
3,866 verified cases is a confirmed file from 2023, and a file is smaller than the population of women living near fighting. Read each row for the unit it counts, the people in the denominator, and the year attached to it.
Indicator | Figure | Year |
Verified conflict-related sexual violence cases | 3,866, up 50 percent from 2022 | 2023 |
Share of verified cases involving women and girls | 95 percent | 2023 |
Share of chronically food-insecure people who are women and girls | 60 percent | not dated on the cited UN Women page |
Girls in conflict zones compared with boys who are out of school | 2.5 times more likely | not dated on the cited UN Women page |
School-aged girls affected by crises globally | approximately 112 million | not dated on the cited UN Women page |
In the UN Women humanitarian facts and figures assessment, the United Nations verified 3,866 cases of conflict-related sexual violence in 2023, a 50 percent increase from 2022, and women and girls accounted for 95 percent of those verified cases. The same assessment reports that women and girls constitute 60 percent of people who are chronically food insecure, that girls in conflict zones are 2.5 times more likely than boys to be out of school, and that approximately 112 million school-aged girls are affected by crises globally. Those three figures are not dated on the cited UN Women page.
The case total records incidents that met a verification standard in conflict and crisis settings. Assaults that never reached a verifier sit outside it. The hunger figure is a share of a chronically food-insecure population, not a count of people made hungry by one war. The schooling comparison is a relative likelihood, not a headcount of girls who will never return. For protection planning, a share points to who is over-represented in a harmed group. For diplomacy, it still needs a year, a denominator, and a definition before it can support a mandate.
Four errors that bend the argument
Treating verified cases as prevalence. Survivors may fear retaliation, stigma, insecurity, or lack of access to justice and medical services. The statistic is a confirmed minimum. A response sized only to 3,866 cases will miss people who never reached a clinic or a court.
Relying on aggregate civilian-death totals. A death total with no split by sex, age, or displacement cannot show the 95 percent share of verified sexual-violence cases, the food-insecurity share, or the schooling gap. Those rows measure different harms, and collapsing them into one casualty line erases the split a protection mandate needs.
Equating proximity with vulnerability alone. Living near a deadly event raises exposure. Access to care, displacement status, and whether protection is staffed still decide who is harmed. The hunger and schooling rows describe exposure. They do not name the ration, the school place, or the staffed post that would reduce it.
Treating one statistic as proof of an argument. A 50 percent rise in verified cases can mean more violence, better documentation, or both. The definition has to travel with the number. A case count records documented presence of harm. It does not measure women's influence over decisions, and it is not a funding share for clinics, food, or schools.
Monitoring should disaggregate by sex, age, disability, displacement status, and proximity to armed actors. Before you cite any figure, ask four questions: what it measures, who is counted, which year and source it comes from, and whether it is a count, an estimate, or a funding share.
Risks That Set Women Apart in Armed Conflict
Conflict creates distinct risks for women through the breakdown of protection, health care, education, and access to resources. Each harm has a practical point of intervention.
Sexual violence can be used to terrorize, displace, and punish. Risk rises where protection fails, including along flight routes, at checkpoints, and in shelters without lighting or secure rooms. Confidential clinical care and safe referrals allow survivors to seek help without disclosing their experiences in public.
Pregnancy and childbirth become more dangerous when health systems are damaged or inaccessible. UNFPA, drawing on UN Women, reports that more than 500 women and girls die every day in crisis settings from preventable pregnancy- and childbirth-related complications. UNFPA estimates that 60 percent of preventable maternal deaths occur in crisis zones and fragile settings. Damaged hospitals, interrupted supply chains, displaced health workers, and unsafe transport can all block emergency obstetric care. A functioning referral, fuel, and a passable road can determine whether that care is reachable. Delegates comparing mandates can consult this guide to sexual and reproductive health in conflicts.
Funding for gender-based violence protection has consistently fallen short of documented need. That gap leaves services such as safe referrals and clinical support vulnerable precisely when displacement and insecurity make them harder to reach.
Hunger and displacement intensify when households lose fields, wages, or ration access. Women traveling with children may reach distribution points where privacy and safety are limited. Nearby, regular food distribution can reduce the pressure to trade safety for food.
Lost education often begins when families withdraw girls because the journey to school feels unsafe or household work takes priority. A nearby learning space and safe passage address those immediate barriers more directly than a general promise to reopen schools.
Economic loss follows when livelihoods, land, or identity papers disappear. Women who become sole providers may lack legal standing to claim property or aid in their own names. Restoring documents and registering women as aid recipients can reduce dependence on a male relative who may be missing.
These risks can converge for one person: a displaced pregnant girl may face violence, closed maternity services, hunger, interrupted schooling, and missing documents at once. Protection planning must account for those overlapping barriers rather than treating each service need in isolation.
Women as Responders and Leaders Beyond Victimhood
Women keep services alive when formal institutions thin out. They work as community health workers, shelter operators, documenters building case files for later accountability, traders moving food, and local mediators negotiating access at village or district level. Women's rights organizations carry those demands into national and regional forums.
A response that outlasted the offices
The Chr. Michelsen Institute's 2025 study of women's activism in Sudan follows feminist organizers in Kassala after the April 2023 war. One organizer, already tied to feminist groups and to the Emergency Response Rooms, waited for families arriving by truck from cities under attack, raised money to pay the drivers, and went door to door for beds and sheets to furnish displacement centers. The network could move quickly because youth-led and feminist groups were already in place from the revolution, the pandemic, and earlier communal violence.
When a political banner became dangerous, the group let food bags lead. Carrying supplies got them into centers without a confrontation. In one case they were refused entry, so they sat under a tree with women from the center and from the neighborhood, drank coffee, and kept talking about rights and how women could act together to stop the war. For places they couldn't reach, they formed smaller circles rather than waiting for a national office to reopen.
That pattern shows up far beyond one state. The same women who hold a clinic roster, a shelter list, or a violation log are often unpaid, personally exposed, and missing from both negotiating teams and aid budgets.
Apply a simple test. When a text describes women in a conflict, does it name any woman acting as a responder? If it doesn't, look for local organizations and read their own documentation before you draft.
Legal Protection Frameworks and Their Limits
Protection of women in conflict zones sits on several norms that do different jobs.
UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) asked states and the UN to include women in peace and security decisions and to protect them from gender-based violence. Later Council resolutions treated conflict-related sexual violence as a threat to peace and security, not only as a private crime. The Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols protect civilians, including women, against attacks and against outrages on personal dignity. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court classifies rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, and related acts as war crimes or crimes against humanity when the legal thresholds are met. CEDAW General Recommendation 30 applies the women's convention to conflict prevention, conflict, and post-conflict situations, including displacement and access to justice.
A norm reaches a survivor only through national law, funded services, trained police and prosecutors, and reporting channels that still function when the courthouse doesn't. International humanitarian law sets the civilian-protection floor. It doesn't staff a clinic or issue a travel pass.
Run three checks on any legal claim:
- Binding or aspirational: A Council resolution or treaty obligation is not the same thing as a communiqué.
- Plan and budget: A national action plan that exists only as a PDF isn't an operating system.
- Someone who can act: An accountability body has to be able to receive a violation and do something with it.
If those checks fail, the next question isn't which article to cite. It's what happens after a survivor tries to report.
Where Protection Breaks Down After Violence
Laws and hotlines can exist while a survivor still can't reach care. The gap is widest for displaced women, adolescent girls, and women with disabilities. The Secretary-General's women, peace and security report records more than 60 million forcibly displaced and stateless women and girls facing increased risks of gender-based violence. UNFPA estimated that 92 million people needed gender-based-violence services in 2025, while its own reach fell 38 percent for those services and 33 percent for sexual and reproductive health services compared with the previous year.
Walk the path, and attach a check to each stage. A resolution on gender-based violence prevention is only as real as the first stage a survivor can use.
Disclosure fails when stigma and fear of retaliation make speech itself dangerous, including inside a household or a camp committee. Check whether confidential channels and female staff exist where she already goes, not only at a distant headquarters.
Travel to care fails on damaged roads, at checkpoints, and when the fare costs more than a day's food. Check safe transport and the time to a facility that is open today.
Clinical care fails when the building is destroyed or the cupboard is empty. Check stocks of emergency contraception and post-exposure prophylaxis, not the existence of a protocol on a wall.
Documentation fails when identity papers were lost in flight and every new office asks her to start again. Check for survivor-centered documentation that avoids repeated interviews.
Referral fails when nobody connects clinical care to legal or psychosocial help. Check for a written pathway she can follow without depending on one staff member's memory.
Funding fails when the program is designed and the money isn't there, which is why service reach can fall even as need rises. Check the share of required gender-based-violence funding that was received.
The diagnostic question is simple. Is access to care measured, or only the existence of a policy or program?
How Women Shape Peace Agreements and Where They Are Shut Out
Absence from the table is measurable, and it got worse between the two years the UN compared.
Measure | 2023 | 2025 |
Share of negotiators | 9.6% | 5% across 57 peace processes |
Share of mediators | 13.7% | Not published in the 2025 count |
Share of signatories to peace and ceasefire agreements | 26.6% | Not published in the 2025 count |
Agreements mentioning women, girls or gender | 26% | 10 of 53 agreements (19%) |
Ceasefire agreements explicitly prohibiting conflict-related sexual violence | Not stated for 2023 | None of 13 |
The UN peace and security page on women, peace and security sets out the 2023 baseline: women were 9.6 percent of negotiators, 13.7 percent of mediators, and 26.6 percent of signatories. Only 26 percent of agreements mentioned women, girls, or gender, and none included women's groups as signatories. In 2025, women were just 5 percent of negotiators across 57 peace processes, and only 10 of 53 agreements, 19 percent, referenced women, girls, gender, or sexual violence. None of 13 ceasefire agreements explicitly prohibited conflict-related sexual violence.
Negotiations that exclude women are less likely to name civilian priorities: sexual violence, displacement, access to land, documentation, family reunification, and local service delivery. The Beijing Platform review is a reminder that participation pledges are older than most of the delegates now writing them into resolutions.
Presence is a seat. A woman on the delegation can still be excluded from drafting sessions, night meetings, and the security cluster.
Influence is agenda-setting authority and speaking time. If she can't put sexual violence or family reunification on the list, attendance hasn't changed the text.
Implementation power is signatory status, a gender provision with an enforcement mechanism, and funding. A ceasefire line that names a prohibited act and assigns a verification body to report breaches is not the same as a preamble that encourages parties to consider women's concerns. The 2025 ceasefire record, with none of 13 agreements explicitly prohibiting conflict-related sexual violence, shows how often even the narrower version is missing.
A single female delegate isn't evidence of inclusive peacebuilding. Count women's share of negotiating teams, speaking time, agenda-setting authority, signatory status, enforceable gender provisions, and funding for women-led local mediation. Tie those indicators to ceasefire verification and to implementation reviews, or the numbers stay ceremonial.
Use These Findings in Your Committee Research
A position paper on women in conflict zones is judged on whether each figure supports the sentence it sits in. Work in this order.
- Pick one lens. Risk, role, protection, or participation should match the committee agenda. A disarmament committee doesn't need a maternal-health brief dressed up as a speech, and a humanitarian committee shouldn't stop at negotiator headcounts.
- Pull primary texts. Use Security Council reports, UN Women and UNFPA assessments, and the peace agreement itself. We treat UN documents, treaty text, foreign-ministry statements, official statistics, and verified analysis as the core set, and we prefer those primary sources over secondary summaries.
- Log the figure before you quote it. Write down the year, the denominator, and the source type, then run the four-question check: measure, who is counted, year and source, and whether it is a count, an estimate, or a funding share.
- Separate three claims in the draft. Say what presence would look like, what influence would change in the text, and what implementation power would fund or enforce. Recommend one benchmark you can count, such as a ceasefire clause that names conflict-related sexual violence and a verifier.
- Match evidence to the sentence. If the clause is about mediators, don't support it with a case count. If the clause is about care after violence, don't support it with a participation percentage.
Projects can hold a conference, an essay, or a case in one place, keep more than one piece of work open, and start from templates such as a country brief, a position paper, or crisis prep. Any setup that keeps the source attached to the claim will do the same job.
Model Diplomat gives MUN and international-relations students sourced answers, structured courses, and project templates for country briefs and position papers on topics like women in conflict zones. You can keep a verified figure, the agreement text, and your draft in one place while you check that each number still matches the claim. Visit Model Diplomat to organize your next committee brief.
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